SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

Fetches named heads or tags from one or more other repositories,
along with the objects necessary to complete them.

The ref names and their object names of fetched refs are stored
in .git/FETCH_HEAD. This information is left for a later merge
operation done by git merge.

When <refspec> stores the fetched result in remote-tracking branches,
the tags that point at these branches are automatically
followed. This is done by first fetching from the remote using
the given <refspec>s, and if the repository has objects that are
pointed by remote tags that it does not yet have, then fetch
those missing tags. If the other end has tags that point at
branches you are not interested in, you will not get them.

git fetch can fetch from either a single named repository,
or from several repositories at once if <group> is given and
there is a remotes.<group> entry in the configuration file.
(See git-config(1)).

OPTIONS

--all

Fetch all remotes.

-a

--append

Append ref names and object names of fetched refs to the
existing contents of .git/FETCH_HEAD. Without this
option old data in .git/FETCH_HEAD will be overwritten.

--depth=<depth>

Deepen the history of a shallow repository created by
git clone with --depth=<depth> option (see git-clone(1))
to the specified number of commits from the tip of each remote
branch history. Tags for the deepened commits are not fetched.

--dry-run

Show what would be done, without making any changes.

-f

--force

When git fetch is used with <rbranch>:<lbranch>
refspec, it refuses to update the local branch
<lbranch> unless the remote branch <rbranch> it
fetches is a descendant of <lbranch>. This option
overrides that check.

-k

--keep

Keep downloaded pack.

--multiple

Allow several <repository> and <group> arguments to be
specified. No <refspec>s may be specified.

-p

--prune

After fetching, remove any remote-tracking branches which
no longer exist on the remote.

-n

--no-tags

By default, tags that point at objects that are downloaded
from the remote repository are fetched and stored locally.
This option disables this automatic tag following. The default
behavior for a remote may be specified with the remote.<name>.tagopt
setting. See git-config(1).

-t

--tags

This is a short-hand for giving "refs/tags/:refs/tags/"
refspec from the command line, to ask all tags to be fetched
and stored locally. Because this acts as an explicit
refspec, the default refspecs (configured with the
remote.$name.fetch variable) are overridden and not used.

--recurse-submodules[=yes|on-demand|no]

This option controls if and under what conditions new commits of
populated submodules should be fetched too. It can be used as a
boolean option to completely disable recursion when set to no or to
unconditionally recurse into all populated submodules when set to
yes, which is the default when this option is used without any
value. Use on-demand to only recurse into a populated submodule
when the superproject retrieves a commit that updates the submodule's
reference to a commit that isn't already in the local submodule
clone.

--no-recurse-submodules

Disable recursive fetching of submodules (this has the same effect as
using the --recurse-submodules=no option).

--submodule-prefix=<path>

Prepend <path> to paths printed in informative messages
such as "Fetching submodule foo". This option is used
internally when recursing over submodules.

--recurse-submodules-default=[yes|on-demand]

This option is used internally to temporarily provide a
non-negative default value for the --recurse-submodules
option. All other methods of configuring fetch's submodule
recursion (such as settings in gitmodules(5) and
git-config(1)) override this option, as does
specifying --[no-]recurse-submodules directly.

-u

--update-head-ok

By default git fetch refuses to update the head which
corresponds to the current branch. This flag disables the
check. This is purely for the internal use for git pull
to communicate with git fetch, and unless you are
implementing your own Porcelain you are not supposed to
use it.

--upload-pack <upload-pack>

When given, and the repository to fetch from is handled
by git fetch-pack, --exec=<upload-pack> is passed to
the command to specify non-default path for the command
run on the other end.

-q

--quiet

Pass --quiet to git-fetch-pack and silence any other internally
used git commands. Progress is not reported to the standard error
stream.

-v

--verbose

Be verbose.

--progress

Progress status is reported on the standard error stream
by default when it is attached to a terminal, unless -q
is specified. This flag forces progress status even if the
standard error stream is not directed to a terminal.

<repository>

The "remote" repository that is the source of a fetch
or pull operation. This parameter can be either a URL
(see the section GIT URLS below) or the name
of a remote (see the section REMOTES below).

<group>

A name referring to a list of repositories as the value
of remotes.<group> in the configuration file.
(See git-config(1)).

<refspec>

The format of a <refspec> parameter is an optional plus
+, followed by the source ref <src>, followed
by a colon :, followed by the destination ref <dst>.

The remote ref that matches <src>
is fetched, and if <dst> is not empty string, the local
ref that matches it is fast-forwarded using <src>.
If the optional plus + is used, the local ref
is updated even if it does not result in a fast-forward
update.

Note

If the remote branch from which you want to pull is
modified in non-linear ways such as being rewound and
rebased frequently, then a pull will attempt a merge with
an older version of itself, likely conflict, and fail.
It is under these conditions that you would want to use
the + sign to indicate non-fast-forward updates will
be needed. There is currently no easy way to determine
or declare that a branch will be made available in a
repository with this behavior; the pulling user simply
must know this is the expected usage pattern for a branch.

Note

You never do your own development on branches that appear
on the right hand side of a <refspec> colon on Pull: lines;
they are to be updated by git fetch. If you intend to do
development derived from a remote branch B, have a Pull:
line to track it (i.e. Pull: B:remote-B), and have a separate
branch my-B to do your development on top of it. The latter
is created by git branch my-B remote-B (or its equivalent git
checkout -b my-B remote-B). Run git fetch to keep track of
the progress of the remote side, and when you see something new
on the remote branch, merge it into your development branch with
git pull . remote-B, while you are on my-B branch.

Note

There is a difference between listing multiple <refspec>
directly on git pull command line and having multiple
Pull: <refspec> lines for a <repository> and running
git pull command without any explicit <refspec> parameters.
<refspec> listed explicitly on the command line are always
merged into the current branch after fetching. In other words,
if you list more than one remote refs, you would be making
an Octopus. While git pull run without any explicit <refspec>
parameter takes default <refspec>s from Pull: lines, it
merges only the first <refspec> found into the current branch,
after fetching all the remote refs. This is because making an
Octopus from remote refs is rarely done, while keeping track
of multiple remote heads in one-go by fetching more than one
is often useful.

Some short-cut notations are also supported.

tag <tag> means the same as refs/tags/<tag>:refs/tags/<tag>;
it requests fetching everything up to the given tag.

A parameter <ref> without a colon is equivalent to
<ref>: when pulling/fetching, so it merges <ref> into the current
branch without storing the remote branch anywhere locally

GIT URLS

In general, URLs contain information about the transport protocol, the
address of the remote server, and the path to the repository.
Depending on the transport protocol, some of this information may be
absent.

Git supports ssh, git, http, and https protocols (in addition, ftp,
and ftps can be used for fetching and rsync can be used for fetching
and pushing, but these are inefficient and deprecated; do not use
them).

The following syntaxes may be used with them:

ssh://[user@]host.xz[:port]/path/to/repo.git/

git://host.xz[:port]/path/to/repo.git/

http[s]://host.xz[:port]/path/to/repo.git/

ftp[s]://host.xz[:port]/path/to/repo.git/

rsync://host.xz/path/to/repo.git/

An alternative scp-like syntax may also be used with the ssh protocol:

[user@]host.xz:path/to/repo.git/

The ssh and git protocols additionally support ~username expansion:

ssh://[user@]host.xz[:port]/~[user]/path/to/repo.git/

git://host.xz[:port]/~[user]/path/to/repo.git/

[user@]host.xz:/~[user]/path/to/repo.git/

For local repositories, also supported by git natively, the following
syntaxes may be used:

/path/to/repo.git/

file:///path/to/repo.git/

These two syntaxes are mostly equivalent, except when cloning, when
the former implies --local option. See git-clone(1) for
details.

When git doesn't know how to handle a certain transport protocol, it
attempts to use the remote-<transport> remote helper, if one
exists. To explicitly request a remote helper, the following syntax
may be used:

<transport>::<address>

where <address> may be a path, a server and path, or an arbitrary
URL-like string recognized by the specific remote helper being
invoked. See gitremote-helpers(1) for details.

If there are a large number of similarly-named remote repositories and
you want to use a different format for them (such that the URLs you
use will be rewritten into URLs that work), you can create a
configuration section of the form:

a URL like "work:repo.git" or like "host.xz:/path/to/repo.git" will be
rewritten in any context that takes a URL to be "git://git.host.xz/repo.git".

If you want to rewrite URLs for push only, you can create a
configuration section of the form:

[url "<actual url base>"]
pushInsteadOf = <other url base>

For example, with this:

[url "ssh://example.org/"]
pushInsteadOf = git://example.org/

a URL like "git://example.org/path/to/repo.git" will be rewritten to
"ssh://example.org/path/to/repo.git" for pushes, but pulls will still
use the original URL.

REMOTES

The name of one of the following can be used instead
of a URL as <repository> argument:

a remote in the git configuration file: $GIT_DIR/config,

a file in the $GIT_DIR/remotes directory, or

a file in the $GIT_DIR/branches directory.

All of these also allow you to omit the refspec from the command line
because they each contain a refspec which git will use by default.

Named remote in configuration file

You can choose to provide the name of a remote which you had previously
configured using git-remote(1), git-config(1)
or even by a manual edit to the $GIT_DIR/config file. The URL of
this remote will be used to access the repository. The refspec
of this remote will be used by default when you do
not provide a refspec on the command line. The entry in the
config file would appear like this:

The <pushurl> is used for pushes only. It is optional and defaults
to <url>.

Named file in $GIT_DIR/remotes

You can choose to provide the name of a
file in $GIT_DIR/remotes. The URL
in this file will be used to access the repository. The refspec
in this file will be used as default when you do not
provide a refspec on the command line. This file should have the
following format:

URL: one of the above URL format
Push: <refspec>
Pull: <refspec>

Push: lines are used by git push and
Pull: lines are used by git pull and git fetch.
Multiple Push: and Pull: lines may
be specified for additional branch mappings.

Named file in $GIT_DIR/branches

You can choose to provide the name of a
file in $GIT_DIR/branches.
The URL in this file will be used to access the repository.
This file should have the following format:

<url>#<head>

<url> is required; #<head> is optional.

Depending on the operation, git will use one of the following
refspecs, if you don't provide one on the command line.
<branch> is the name of this file in $GIT_DIR/branches and
<head> defaults to master.

git fetch uses:

refs/heads/<head>:refs/heads/<branch>

git push uses:

HEAD:refs/heads/<head>

EXAMPLES

Update the remote-tracking branches:

$ git fetch origin

The above command copies all branches from the remote refs/heads/
namespace and stores them to the local refs/remotes/origin/ namespace,
unless the branch.<name>.fetch option is used to specify a non-default
refspec.

Using refspecs explicitly:

$ git fetch origin +pu:pu maint:tmp

This updates (or creates, as necessary) branches pu and tmp in
the local repository by fetching from the branches (respectively)
pu and maint from the remote repository.

The pu branch will be updated even if it is does not fast-forward,
because it is prefixed with a plus sign; tmp will not be.

BUGS

Using --recurse-submodules can only fetch new commits in already checked
out submodules right now. When e.g. upstream added a new submodule in the
just fetched commits of the superproject the submodule itself can not be
fetched, making it impossible to check out that submodule later without
having to do a fetch again. This is expected to be fixed in a future git
version.